Friday November, 30th, the Trump Administration held a signing ceremony with Mexico and Canada for a supposedly “new” version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But this retread NAFTA fails on jobs, wages, human rights, the environment and public health. It also has big giveaways for the oil and pharmaceutical industry that make it even easier for them to abuse people, our communities, and the environment.

Trump, who started the whole renegotiation process has threatened and cajoled Mexico and Canada into signing an agreement that will face stiff opposition in all three countries as the ugly details become more widely known.

This is a bad agreement and the next few months will be critically important in applying grassroots pressure to Congress to either fix the NAFTA proposal by reopening the texts to add real worker and environmental enforcement mechanisms, or nix it.

View our NAFTA 2.0 Fix it or Nix it Facebook live streamed webinar above.

This live streamed webinar is an important opportunity to provide our movement with information about the impact that NAFTA has had and how Trump’s NAFTA could continue to harm working people and the environment in all three countries. It will also provide grassroots activists with tools to contact their member of congress and get involved in the fight against Trump’s pro-corporate NAFTA.

We have an exciting lineup of panelists:

Arthur Stamoulis serves as Executive Director of the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), a national coalition of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer and human rights organizations working together for trade policies that promote a just and sustainable global economy.

Anthony Torres is the Associate Campaign Representative with the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Office. He is a systems-level thinker, political ecologist, and climate activist whose work focuses on the creation of new collective stories to challenge dominant narratives of extraction, exploitation, and extinction.

Ted Lewis has led Global Exchange’s work for peace, democracy, and human rights in Mexico since the dawn of the NAFTA era in 1994. Throughout that time he has written, spoken-out, and organized resistance to North American trade policies that undermine labor rights, displace people, disrupt communities, and devastate the environment. Ted’s analysis been published widely and he is cited frequently in print, radio, television and online media.

Catherine Houston is the Political, Rapid Response and Women of Steel Coordinator for the United Steelworkers District 12. She is an activist and grassroots communication and mobilization educator for the United Steelworkers, fighting for fair trade, worker rights, women’s issues, safety and health, and sound legislative policy on behalf of all workers and working families. Catherine trains workers to be actively engaged rapid response activists and Women of Steel to be activist leaders through education, growth and empowerment.

Manuel Pérez-Rocha is an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and an Associate of the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam. He is a Mexican national who has led in efforts to promote just and sustainable alternative approaches to trade and investment agreements for two decades. He has long been a thought and action leader of tri-national organizing for economic justice.

 

We join our partners from Canada, Mexico and across the United States calling out the Trump NAFTA Proposal because it falls short on Jobs, Wages, Human Rights and the Environment.
Our friend, Arthur Stamoulis, Citizens Trade Campaign’s executive director, says, “A lot more work is needed for a NAFTA replacement to benefit working people and the planet.” We agree.
Here is the rest of his response to the proposed text for a revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA):
“The Trump administration’s current NAFTA proposal fails to include the critical changes necessary to protect jobs, raise wages, defend human rights and reverse environmental damage.  Substantial additional changes are needed if the pact is going to provide real benefits to people other than corporate elites.
“Each week, NAFTA continues to destroy livelihoods across the continent.  Unfortunately, the deal on offer does not include the enforcement mechanisms for labor and environmental standards needed to prevent employers from moving jobs abroad to areas where worker rights and environmental protection are routinely ignored.  Without strong labor and environmental rules with swift and certain enforcement, Trump’s version of NAFTA will continue to facilitate the outsourcing of jobs, the suppression of wages and the dumping of toxins.  While steps forward have been made in other areas, a NAFTA replacement without this fundamental fix is a nonstarter.
“In addition, Trump’s proposal is significantly worse than the original NAFTA on access to medicines.  The world needs trade policies that increase the affordability of life-saving medications — not ones that extend monopolies for pharmaceutical giants and raise healthcare costs.”Beyond failing to even mention climate change, the current proposal also seeks to maintain special rights for some of the planet’s most egregious corporate polluters.  If allowed to move forward as written, these handouts to oil and gas companies would prolong NAFTA’s ongoing threats to our air, water and climate.
“As much as the White House wants to spin this as a win, a lot more work is needed before there’s a NAFTA replacement deal that working families can be happy about.  All parties involved should continue working towards a trilateral agreement that actually benefits working people and the planet.”